Reviews

There is a problem with this movie: a Flemish nurse gives indications to the British warplanes to bombard German troops being in the open field and then there after she is nursing the soldiers that she was betraying. Martha Knockaert was not a Mata Hari but she was dangerous and by her behavior she killed a lot of people. Her trial by the Germans military is correct as it was by that time in the West Flanders in 1916. The movie shows us the German troops at the market place in full exercise which gives the movie a moment of real authenticity. Also the "café" scenes with the German officers are real. Roeselare was at that time a backward city with a rural population but now it is the nerve of a commercial region. It is the only movie ever made about this town.

The life of two elder men is at its apogee in this turbulent fresco of intimate conversations about love, relationship and friendship between men and women. Clotilde seems to be the "Ingénu libertine" and some other girls match their sex appeal against experimented seducers. Edouard Baer is astonishing: he seems to philosophy about life and death and has no real feelings for the opposite sex, for him women are just dolls that you can throw away at any time after having "used" them. Noël Godin is laughable as a man who turns out to be to old for hunting young girls and too young for being their grandfather. The movie is made as a series of sketches which do not annoy at any moment; this is a colorful insight into the psychology of the filmmarket of Cannes by people who are not all stars.